Gareth E. Rees

The second of the three that I read by this weirdo. He writes like an amateur but somehow carries it off in that half arsed way that the British seem to breed into themselves. I say that in a nice way. He is definitely out there somewhere but I cannot quite figure out where.

There are strokes of absolute brilliance in this book, mind boggling transpositions and juxtapositions of fantasy and reality in ways that are really good. In some ways it is like coming across an original artwork in Tescos, mark you, Tescos not Marks & Spencer or Waitrose.

A clever weaving of history, the present day and an alternative reality that gels into something every readable and rewarding.

Probably a mystery if you are not British, and if you are not British this book should put you off getting too close to one.… (meer)

One of the weirder or stranger books that you may stumble across and something that only the English could produce.

A casual encounter with a supermarket car park after hours leads the author into the hidden life of these ubiquitous but invisible public spaces. Realising that after the shopping is done these spaces become the host to all kinds of surreptitious and dodgy activities like drug deals, burnouts, and bunkups.

This realisation leads to an obsession with the mythology and psychology of these modern arenas.

Freely admitted early on that this obsession will eventually lead to the loss of his marriage, his house, and some of his sanity, we are nonetheless invited to ride shotgun on this bizarre odyssey into the unknown territory that opens up when we question the seemingly ordinariness of this world in which we move, for the most part, like ghosts.

It would be nice to say that this book leads to insights and understandings of the modern world but in truth the fabric of the premise of this book disintegrates in sync with the authors life and grip on reality.

I admired his vulnerability.

As someone who has often sought the deeper meaning to superficial things and events, I could relate directly to this authors quest and also, sadly, to his unraveling.

Who wouldn’t want to know that there was more to this modern life than simply: consumerism, ill-disguised ignorance, a world where people seem unable to differentiate between opinions and facts?

Who doesn’t want a sense of mystery running through their lives?… (meer)

The last of the three books of his that I read. To me they form a trilogy but I may be missing something like discernment and good taste.

Set down in Hastings / St Leonards, it chronicles the renovation of an old house, the demolition of his marriage, the tussle between Alister Crowley and John Logie Baird and much, much more.

By the time I got most of the way through this book I’d really had enough of Gareth E Rees and his woes but I did have some sympathy for woes nonetheless.

I still admired his vulnerability and his tenacity in getting all this down. He doesn’t come across an an author so much as the kind of bloke you wouldn’t want to get stuck next to at a party whilst also being someone you look forward to catching up with because their life seems interesting if not chaotic. I think I’d like him.

Would I recommend this or any of his books to anyone else? I think I would if you are kinda out there somewhere or recognise that “drawn to the edge of things” in yourself. Not to everyone’s taste but I found them engaging.… (meer)

Gareth Rees’s Unofficial Britain: Journeys Through Unexpected Places certainly lives up to its title. Despite having lived in the U.K. for a number of years, and the thousands of miles I’ve driven there, Rees took me to some places I never even got close to exploring (not that I would have likely explored them even if I’d known about them), some truly “unexpected places.”

Picture if you would a study of the country’s electric pylon networks, its ring roads and roundabouts, its abandoned housing and industrial estates, its underpasses and flyovers, its “concrete castles” (otherwise known as multi-story parking garages), and its abandoned hospitals. My personal favorite chapter in the book is its last, one titled “An Emotional Life of the M6,” in which Rees details his still very strong attachment to that particular motorway. This is the chapter that readers will most easily identify with, especially if they have their own memories tucked away of some long highway or interstate they once traveled regularly with their parents.

Gareth Rees visited multiple cities and towns in England, Scotland, and Wales in search of weird stories “about the lore of everyday urban life.” He traveled to major cities like Manchester, London, and Birmingham as well as to lesser known towns and villages such as Harlow, Grimsby, Greenock and Kirkintilloch. You might think that he was only looking for “haunted” spots in each location he stopped to explore. After all, how easy must it be to convince yourself that an abandoned hospital – complete with beds and other left behind equipment – or a long abandoned factory that looks like everyone just decided never to return one after work one day, is haunted? It would be particularly easy to do so at dusk, exactly the time of day Rees most often visited such places.

But Unofficial Britain is not a book about ghost hunters or one written for them. Rees has a much deeper observation than that to share with his readers. Rees reaches the conclusion that even though everything about a place changes over the years, very little that matters actually changes. He maintains that a certain place tone and spirit is maintained forever despite what is overlaid on any place through the centuries – that each use of a place leaves something behind forever in an “ever-turning cycle.” He uses examples such as these:

“The flyover where a viaduct once stood. The Victorian workhouse that became a hospital. The steelworks on the site of a monastery. The burial cairn surrounded by a busy interchange. Motorway earthworks that rise alongside their Stone Age predecessors.”

All places that Rees visits in Unofficial Britain” – all places where he feels the pull of the past so strongly that it gives him goose-bumps.… (meer)